The present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for processing value documents, in particular removing value documents from value document containers with the aid of a gripper.
For receiving bank notes there are employed containers in which the value documents, in particular bank notes, are present as separate units. Separate units are here understood to mean a quantity of at least one bank note or more which is associated with a certain person, an account, an accounting unit etc. Moreover, besides bank notes, the units may also comprise checks, vouchers or other documents of value. For example, the separate units may be formed of separate payments (deposits). Here, before the processing with a bank note processing machine the separate payments are prepared for the upcoming processing and filled into containers. For this, in particular data or information items of the payment are captured and made available for the processing of the bank note processing machine. The data may here comprise specifications about the depositor, an account number, the quantity and the value of the bank notes forming the payment, a unique transaction number, etc. In order to make possible an interruption-free processing by the bank note processing machine, the payments are separated from each other by header cards or separator cards which are inserted between different payments. The bank note processing machine recognizes these header cards or separator cards and thus also the beginning of a new payment.
For separating different stacks of value documents, from DE102009042891 A1 it is known to use separator elements by which a container can be flexibly subdivided into several storage regions for value documents. Into the containers, which are open on one side, there are inserted one or more value document stacks comprising loose value documents. For removing the value documents, the container is usually arranged such that its open side points upward and the value documents stand in the container on their longitudinal edges. The inner wall of the container as well as the separator elements advantageously have a meandering surface comprising several projections and recesses at their sides facing the value-document surfaces. For automatically removing the value document stack from the container by a gripper, there can be used a gripper having several gripping fingers which penetrate into the recesses of the meandering surface from above. The gripper has e.g. two rake-like gripping elements comprising several gripping fingers which can be moved toward each other and away from each other, in order to grip the value document stack reliably and without a risk of damage as soon as the gripping fingers have penetrated perpendicularly into the recesses of the container. In this way, the desired value document stack can be gripped, removed from the container and be deposited remote from the container or inserted into an apparatus for value-document processing.
The gripper is equipped with optical sensors, by which the light reflected by a reflection strip located at the container bottom can be detected. For ascertaining the positions in the container at which the separator elements are present and whether value documents are contained between the separator elements of the container, the gripper is moved along the longitudinal direction of the container. With the aid of the respectively detected sensor signal the gripper can ascertain whether at the respective position of the container above which the gripper is being located the reflection strip is visible or whether this is covered by value documents or by a separator element. With the aid of the sensors the gripper searches in this way for the correct position for lowering the gripping elements. When it has found the correct position, the gripping elements are lowered in order to remove the value document stack contained between the separator elements. After the first value document stack has been removed from the container and transported away by the gripper, the gripper returns to the container in order to remove the next value document stack, etc.
With the hitherto removal of the value document stacks it is disadvantageous that the gripper must check after each value document stack to be removed, whether and, if so, at which positions in the container the next value document stack to be removed is present, and that each time the gripper must search with the aid of its sensors for the correct position for lowering the gripper, because it can recognize this position only when it is in the lowering position above the separator element. Upon this search for the next lowering position, the gripper must be moved relatively slowly over the container.
A further disadvantage of this sequential capture of the separator element positions is that possibly faulty positionings of the separator elements are discovered only in the course of emptying a container. It may e.g. occur that the information items regarding the content of a container report data of five payments, but in actual fact there are present only four storage regions. It may also occur that the distance of the separator elements has been selected too large, so that the displacement region of the gripping elements is exceeded and the stack can no longer be reliably gripped. Upon sequential capture of the separator element positions such errors are only discovered when the container is already partly emptied. But an abortion of the value document removal at this time is disadvantageous, because then a time-consuming manual capture and post-processing of the partially emptied container is necessary.